The following
passages are taken from Father Henri J.M. Nouwen’s book “Life of the Beloved”
published in 1992:

Broken(pg 75-76, 77-85)

How can we respond to our
brokenness? I’d like to suggest two ways: first, befriending our brokenness
and, second, putting our brokenness under the blessing. I hope you will be
able to practice these ways in your own life. I have tried and try constantly,
sometimes with more success than others, but I am convinced that these ways
point in the right direction as means for dealing with our brokenness.

The first response, then, to our
brokenness is to face it squarely and befriend it. This may seem quite
unnatural. Our first, most spontaneous response to pain and suffering is to
avoid it, to keep it at arm’s length; to ignore, circumvent or deny it.
Suffering---be it physical, mental, or emotional---is almost always experienced
as an unwelcome intrusion into our lives, something that should not be there.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to see anything positive in suffering; it
must be avoided away at all costs.

When this is, indeed, our
spontaneous attitude toward our brokenness, it is no surprise that befriending
it seems, at first, masochistic. Still, my own pain in life has taught me
that the first step to healing in not a step away from the pain, but a step
toward it. When brokenness is, in fact, just as intimate a part of our being
as our chosenness and our blessedness, we have to dare to overcome our fear and
become familiar with it. Yes, we have to find the courage to embrace our own
brokenness, to make our most feared enemy into a friend and to claim it as an
intimate companion. I am convinced that healing is often so difficult because we
don’t want to know the pain. Although this is true of all pain, it is
especially true of the pain that comes from a broken heart. The anguish and
agony that result from rejection, separation, neglect, abuse and emotional
manipulation serve only to paralyse us when we can’t face them and keep running
away from them. When we need guidance in our suffering, it is first of all a
guidance that leads us closer to our pain and makes us aware that we do not have
to avoid it, but can befriend it.

My own experience with anguish
has been that facing it and living it through, is the way to healing. But I
cannot do that on my own. I need someone to keep me standing in it, to assure me
that there is peace beyond the anguish, life beyond death and love beyond fear.
But I know now, at least, that attempting to avoid, repress or escape the pain
is like cutting off a limb that could be healed with proper attention.

The deep truth is that our human
suffering need not be an obstacle to the joy and peace we so desire, but can
become, instead the means to it. The great secret of the spiritual life,
the life of the Beloved Sons and daughters of God, is that everything we live,
be it gladness or sadness, joy or pain, health or illness, can all be part of
the journey toward the full realisation of our humanity. It is not hard to say
to one another: “All that is good and beautiful leads us to the glory of the
children of God.” But it is very hard to say: “But didn’t you know that we all
have to suffer and thus enter into our glory?” Nonetheless, real care means
the willingness to help each other in making our brokenness into the gateway to
joy.

The second response to our
brokenness is to put our suffering under the blessing. For me, this “putting of
our brokenness under the blessing” is a precondition for befriending it. Our
brokenness is often so frightening to face because we live it under the curse.
Living our brokenness under the curse means that we experience our pain as a
confirmation of our negative feelings about ourselves. It is like saying, “I
always suspected that I was useless or worthless, and now I am sure of it
because of what is happening to me.” There is always something in us
searching for an explanation of what takes place in our lives and, if we have
already yielded to the temptation to self-rejection, then every form of
misfortune only deepens it. When we lose a family member or friend through
death, when we become jobless, when we fail an examination, when a war breaks
out, an earthquake destroys our home or touches us, the question “Why?”
spontaneously emerges. “Why me?” “Why now?” “Why here?” It is so arduous to live
without an answer to this “Why?” that we are easily seduced into connecting the
events over which we have no control with our conscious or unconscious
evaluation. When we have cursed ourselves or have allowed others to curse us,
it is very tempting to explain all the brokenness we experience as an expression
or confirmation of this curse. Before we fully realise it, we have already said
to ourselves: “You see, I always thought I was no good. . .Now I know for sure.
The facts of life prove it.”

The great spiritual call of the
Beloved Children of God is to pull their brokenness away from the shadow of the
curse and put it under the light of the blessing. This is not as easy as it
sounds. The powers of the darkness around us are
strong, and our world finds it easier to manipulate self-rejecting people than
self-accepting people. But when we keep listening attentively to the voice
calling us the Beloved, it becomes possible to live our brokenness, not as a
confirmation of our fear that we are worthless, but as an opportunity to purify
and deepen the blessing that rests upon us. Physical, mental or emotional
pain lived under the blessing is experienced in ways radically different from
physical, mental or emotional pain lived under the curse. Even a small
burden, perceived as a sign of our worthlessness, can lead us to deep
depression---even suicide. However, great and heavy burdens become light and
easy when they are lived in the light of the blessing. What seemed intolerable
becomes a challenge. What seemed a reason for depression becomes a source of
purification. What seemed punishment becomes a gentle pruning. What seemed
rejection becomes a way to a deeper communion.

And so the great task becomes
that of allowing the blessing to touch us in our brokenness. Then our brokenness
will gradually come to be seen as an opening toward the full acceptance of
ourselves as the Beloved. This explains why true joy can be experienced in the
midst of great suffering. It is the joy of being disciplined, purified and
pruned. Just as athletes who experience great pain
as they run the race can, at the same time, taste the joy of knowing that they
are coming closer to their goal, so also can the Beloved experience suffering as
a way to deeper communion for which they yearn. Here joy and sorrow are no
longer each other’s opposites, but have become the two sides of the same desire
to grow to the fullness of the Beloved.

The different twelve-step programs,
such as Alcoholics Anonymous, Adult Children of Alcoholics and Overeaters
Anonymous, are all ways of pulling our brokenness under the blessing and thereby
making it a way to new life. All addictions make us slaves, but each time we
confess openly our dependencies and express our trust that God can truly set us
free, the source of our suffering becomes the source of our hope.

I vividly remember how I had, at
one time, become totally dependent on the affection and friendship of one
person. This dependency threw me into a pit of great anguish and brought me to
the verge of a very self-destructive depression. But from the moment I was
helped to experience my interpersonal addition as an expression of a need for
total surrender to a living God who would fulfil the deepest desires of my
heart, I started to live my dependency in a radically new way. Instead of living
it in shame and embarrassment, I was able to live it as an urgent invitation to
claim God’s unconditional love for myself, a love I can depend on without any
fear.

Well, my dear friend, I wonder if I
have helped you by speaking in this way about our brokenness. Befriending it and
putting it under the blessing do not necessarily make our pain less painful. In
fact, it often makes us more aware of how deep the wounds are and how
unrealistic it is to expect them to vanish. Living with mentally handicapped
people has made me more and more aware of how our wounds are often an essential
part of the fabric of our lives. The pain of parental rejection, the suffering
of not being able to marry, the anguish of always needing help even in the most
“normal” things such as dressing, eating, walking, taking a bus, buying a gift
or paying a bill. . .none of this brokenness will go away or become less. And
still, embracing it and bring it into the light of the One who calls us the
Belovedcan make our brokenness shine like a diamond.

Do
you remember how, two years ago, we went to Lincoln Centre and heard Leonard
Bernstein conducting music by Tschaikovsky? It was a very moving evening. Later
we realised that it was the last time we were to hear this musical genius.
Leonard Bernstein was, no doubt, one of the most influential conductors and
composers in introducing me to the beauty and the joy of music. As a teenager, I
was completely taken by the enthusiastic way in which he played the role of both
conductor and soloist in a performance of the Mozart piano concertos at the
Kurhaus Concert Hall in Scheveningen, Holland. When his West Side Story
appeared on the screen, I found myself humming its captivating melodies for
months afterward, returning to the cinema whenever I could.

Watching his expressive face on TV
while he directed and explained classical music for children, I realised how
much Leonard Bernstein had become my most revered music teacher. It is no
surprise, therefore, that his sudden death hit me as that of a very personal
friend.

As I write you now about our
brokenness, I recall a scene from Leonard Bernstein’s Mass (a musical
work written in memory of John F. Kennedy) that embodied for me the thought of
brokenness put under the blessing. Toward the end of this work, the priest,
richly dressed in splendid liturgical vestments, is lifted up by his people. He
towers high above the adoring crowd, carrying in his hands a glass chalice.
Suddenly, the human pyramid collapses, and the priest comes tumbling down. His
vestments are ripped off, and his glass chalice falls to the ground and is
shattered. As he walks slowly through the debris of his former glory---barefoot,
wearing only blue jeans and a T-shirt---children’s voices are heard singing,
“Laude, laude, laude”---“Praise, praise, praise.” Suddenly the priest notices
the broken chalice. He looks at it for a long time and then, haltingly, he says,
“I never realised that broken glass could shine so brightly.”

Those words I will never forget.
For me, they capture the mystery of my life, of your life and now, shortly after
his death, of Bernstein’s own splendid but tragic life.

Before concluding these words about
our brokenness, I want to say again something about its implications for our
relationships with other people. As I grow older, I am more than ever aware
of how little as well as how much we can do for others. Yes indeed, we are
chosen, blessed and broken to be given.

In September 1995, Henri Nouwen was
on one-year sabbatical leave, in which he wrote 5 books, before he passed away
with a massive heart attack on September 21, 1996. The following passages are
taken from Father Henri J.M. Nouwen’s book “Sabbatical Journey—-The Diary of
his final Year” published in 1998:

1.Brokenness
March 28,1996 (pg 123)

Our life is full of
brokenness---broken relationship, broken promises, broken expectations. How
can we live that brokenness without becoming bitter and resentful except by
returning again and again to God’s faithful presence in our lives. Without
this “place” of return, our journey easily leads us to darkness and despair.
But with this safe and solid home, we can keep renewing our faith, and keep
trusting that the many setbacks of life move us forward to an always greater
bond with the God of the covenant.

2.Tragedies
March 17,1996 (pg 119)

To the question who was to blame
for the tragedy of a man born blind, Jesus replied, “Nobody. He was born blind
so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” (John 9:3)

We spend a lot of energy wondering
who can be blamed for our own or other people’s tragedies---our parents,
ourselves, the immigrants, the Jews, the gays, the blacks, the fundamentalists,
the Catholics? There is a strange satisfaction in being able to point our finger
at someone, even ourselves. It gives us some sort of explanation and offers us
some form of clarity.

But Jesus doesn’t allow us to
solve our own or other people’s problems through blame. The challenge He poses
is to discern in the midst of our darkness the light of God. In Jesus’ vision
everything, even the greatest tragedy, can become an occasion in which God’s
works can be revealed.

How radically new my life would be if I were willing to move beyond blaming to
proclaiming the works of God in our midst. I don’t think it has much to do with
the exterior of life. All human beings have their tragedies---death,
depression, rejection, poverty, separation, loss, and so on. We seldom have much
control over them. But do we choose to live them as occasions to blame, or as
occasions to see God at work?

The whole Hebrew Bible is a story
of human tragedies, but when these tragedies are lived and remembered as the
context in which God’s unconditional love for the people of Israel is revealed,
this story becomes sacred history.